Clouded Sulphur butterfly on Spotted Knapweed... Montana!

Thought I'd post this collage today just so folks don't think I've dropped off the face of the earth while I'm traveling out west. I will get around to blogs eventually but am slower than usual while on travel.

I'm traveling light which means I do not have my macro lens with me. These images were taken with a 70-300mm Nikon telephoto lens (leftover from my film camera that works perfectly fine on my Nikon D90). The image on the left was taken at 300mm while standing about 10 feet away from the action. The other two were taken with the same lens from the same distance but using a 1.4x tele-converter to get closer to the action. I rather like how these turned out, especially since shooting from further away meant that the butterflies weren't disturbed by my presence!

I'll be posting this to Macro Monday over at Lisa's Chaos... come on over and join the fun! If you'd like to view the collage up closer, click on the image. The images on the left, middle and right are also available to view large if you want to have a closer look.

Julia Butterfly under any name is gorgeous...

Going back to images from our December visit to the Butterfly Conservatory of the National Museum of American History in New York (Manhattan), NY today, I realized I'd never posted this one. When I went looking for the ID of this butterfly, I found lots of references to it as Julia Butterfly (some even as Orange Julia). It wasn't until I looked at the Wikipedia entry on this beauty that I found the scientific name Dryas iulia correctly spelled. Wikipedia also noted that the scientific name is "often incorrectly spelled julia" which is most probably why we commonly know it as Julia Heliconian or Julia Butterfly.

Great Eggfly Butterfly ... Butterfly Conservatory...

The Great Eggfly Butterfly, Hypolimnas bolina, is also called the Blue Moon Butterfly and lives in the South Pacific islands, Australia, New Zealand, Madagascar, and southeast Asia. It also lives in the Butterfly Conservatory of the American Museum of Natural History which is where this photo was taken in December, 2010. The upper side of the wings of the female is dark brown and the female does not have the spots (white circles) that the male, seen here, does.

Tropical Butterfly... something warm for a cold day...

In the Washington, DC Metropolitan area, a little bit of snow often results in school closings... and when schools close... many other things get canceled as a result. Our garden club meeting has been canceled for today because of a little bit of snow falling overnight. It has changed to rain (maybe freezing rain) so roads might be slippery... but out my window I can see our street is mostly clear and cars going up and down.

The above is a long way around to introducing this image... something to warm us all in winter... an Orange Tiger (Dryadula phaetusa) butterfly! Also known as Banded Orange Heliconian and the sole representative of its species according to Wikipedia, it is "native from Brazil to central Mexico, and in summer it can be found rarely as far north as central Kansas." I photographed this one in the Butterfly Conservatory of the National Museum of American History in New York City during a December visit.

Variable Cracker Butterfly... Butterfly Conservatory Image...

There is quite a lot of information on the "Blue Cracker" butterfly to be found when searching for butterflies similar to this one. BUT, when a search was done on the scientific name for the so-called Blue Cracker, MANY references to the Red Cracker butterfly were found... but none of those images had the "red bar" on the fore-wing that this butterfly has.

More exhaustive searching around on Google finally turned up an image that looks very similar to this one, leading me to believe this is Hamadryas feronia, commonly called the Variable Cracker. The "cracker" part of the name refers to the noise the male of this butterfly species makes as part of their territorial display. Isn't he just gorgeous?! (I certainly have no idea if it is a he or a she butterfly... either way... I'm quite pleased with how this turned out!)

Pink Cattleheart or Transandean Butterfly... December, 2010

After quite a bit of "googling" around, I believe I've identified this as Parides iphidamas whose common names are Pink Cattleheart or Transandean. As near as I can tell from having studied several different web sites and images, this is a female of the species.

There seems to be quite a bit of variability in the coloring and markings of this species and I'm by no means an expert! So I trust someone out there will correct me if I've misidentified this one. :-) It is resting on a Pentas blossom cluster... and I do know that Pentas blossoms are a favorite of butterflies everywhere they bloom so have vowed to have more of them in my garden in 2011. (Unfortunately, they are an annual flowering plant and are fairly expensive but I simply must find ways to attract more butterflies to my garden and don't have the room for a butterfly bush!)

Three views of a Leopard Lacewing butterfly...

It would be very nice if the folks at the American Museum of Natural History would post the names of the butterflies on view in the Butterfly Conservatory. That said, there is a certain satisfaction to be had in poking around on the internet to compare my photos with others out there and to see if I can find an ID on my own... in the case of these three images... mission accomplished! It took the visual guide downloaded from the Pacific Science Center plus a search of Wikipedia for Lacewing to find the common name of Leopard Lacewing and the species name of Cethosia cyane for this beauty.

I captured quite a few images of it trying to find the "sweet spot" for drinking nectar from these tiny Pentas blossoms the one above is during a pause in the action with the proboscis tightly curled up. (and note the ladybug on the leaf below the butterfly... not the point of focus but definitely visible once the image was out of the camera and viewed on a big monitor!)

This view shows the underside of the wings... in this species... the underside is perhaps more beautiful than the top side of the wings.

Another topside view... and another miss while trying to find the flower center!

Skipper Butterfly series... From my garden... 2010

Earlier (just a few seconds ago) I published a sunrise post from a camping weekend in Virginia. Since I'm SO far behind posting to my blog, I'm going to include a series of shots of a Skipper butterfly drinking from one of the many flowers of my rampant Plumbago larpentae ground cover in this post. When viewed in the order in which they were taken, they sort of tell a story. Here he is drinking nectar...

There simply MUST be more nectar all the way at the bottom of this flower!

Well, I think I got ALL the nectar there is here so it's time to stop drinking from this flower...

And it's time to move on to the next flower...

Butterfly on lovely blossom... unknowns all around...

We used to call these butterflies cabbage butterflies... not sure if it was because of their color or because they flitted around the cabbage plants in our garden. I'm not sure of the correct name for them... nor do I recall the name of this lovely little flower. (photo taken in a country club garden after having lunch with a friend)

Butterfly gathering pollen in Echinacea...

Happy First Day of Summer! Caught this butterfly going after the pollen in my Echinacea today... not sure of the butterfly ID but am sure this flower is commonly known as Coneflower.

And now I'm all caught up and back on track for posting a photo a day... Have a nice summer everyone!